Howdy y’all! This is Brandon Carbaugh, Narrative Lead at Ocean Drive, and one of several writer/designers on Veil of the Witch.

Given that we're coming down the home stretch toward final release, the nice tired people who run our community efforts have asked me to come say a few words about storytelling in VotW: our goals, the state of things in the game’s current build, and what you can expect at launch.

For anybody reading this who either hasn’t tried the game yet or is afflicted by shipwreck-induced amnesia, here’s a quick refresher:

Veil of the Witch is a spin-off to our studio's launch title, turn-based tactical RPG Lost Eidolons. It's not a full sequel, but more of a mini-quel with a slight genre twist. You can think of it as "Lost Eidolons 1.5". (And to answer the question we are frequently asked: NO, you do NOT need to have played that game to jump right into this one.)

Set five years after a bloody civil war that tore the world in half, VotW puts players in the role of Ashe, an amnesiac castaway stranded on the embattled island of Anareios. Together with a band of sassy misfits, Ashe must fight to regain the memory of who they are and why they came here, by going head-to-head with a bunch of neo-fascist cultists and the undead army they command.

Zombies, cults, civil strife, you know the drill

Structurally, the vision for this game was "Fire Emblem via Hades": storytelling that frames the core looping gameplay within the fiction, and aims to make it more hook-y and compelling by enticing the player’s curiosity. And judging by the fact that some of our players already have a few hundred hours logged and we're not even out of Early Access, I'd say we're well on target!

Now, it's important to say up front: Veil of the Witch's core gameplay is not hugely story-driven. This isn’t Final Fantasy: Tactics. I'd say the balance is about 75-25 stabbing-to-talking, and much of that is frontloaded in the first few hours, while we’re getting you up to speed and invested in the world and characters. However, it’s been our goal from this project’s inception to make sure that even if the story is a small part of the overall time you’ll spend with the game, it should still be polished and well-told.

So here’s where things stand now, and where we’re headed for the full launch.

Right now, VotW contains sort of an appetizer sampler platter of story content: a solid intro, a few of those tasty Hades-style randomized boss dialogues, some unlockable chats with your party, etc. Generally speaking, it’s just enough to give you a taste of things to come and cover our bases in Early Access.

Game development in a nutshell

As we approach release, the next major storytelling change coming your way is a voiceover update. Over the past few months, we’ve spent about 150 hours in recording sessions between this and our other Early Access game (Section 13), and the fruits of that will soon be going live in Veil of the Witch.

Veil of the Witch is a proper SAG union production with some monster talent behind the mic, so you can expect voiceover that is extremely high quality. I’m thrilled with how our actors have brought the script to life, and I can’t wait for players to hear it. I often tell people VO is one area our studio consistently punches above our weight class.

While the voiceover’s not 100% wall-to-wall, you’ll find it pretty much anywhere it would be weird not to: the prologue, the boss fights, major cutscenes, party chats, combat barks of both the grunty and spoken variety, and so on. Basically anything outside of random battles and travel events, you can probably expect talky sounds.

A lot of that content will be going live in the very near future. Some of it we're still working on, and you can expect it at launch.

In addition to voiceover, we’ll also be launching with a bunch of new story content you have not seen yet, including:

• A small number of new portrait variants for party characters, so they’re a little more expressive in cutscenes Swoon~
• A series of story-heavy flashbacks, similar to the one that’s in the game now, that delve into Ashe’s past. You’ll earn these gradually as you play, and unlock them in town.
I promise this box will have words in it by the time the game launches.
• An ending sequence that plays out the first time players finish Act 3, to bridge the story into the endgame content. (This will replace the current placeholder scene with Sable that plays at the end of a completed run.)
• An entirely new fourth Act, a big-ass final bossfight, and a bunch of storytelling stuff that goes with it.
• Dialogue with party members and bosses reacting to your progress through the game in various ways, particularly around endgame content.
• A true, actual, “Wow, emotional closure!” type ending. You’ll unlock that by finishing all flashbacks, completing Act 4, and maybe one or two other conditions we haven’t decided yet.

All of that stuff is already written, about half of it is now recorded, and much of it has been implemented behind the scenes. At this point, we’re just running around hooking things up and tightening rivets in preparation for landing.

Assuming we pull it off, from players’ perspectives, it will feel like a big light-switch gets turned on at launch, and the game suddenly goes from sketch to fully drawn horse really, really quickly.

Like this but the other way around

Anyway, that’s all I got for today!

We’ll be sharing our cast list in another upcoming post. Anime fans and people who played the first game will probably recognize a few names.

Hope y’all dig it!

Talk more soon,
Brandon

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